Team Sanctuary Guards

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

College is in full swing, and my time for card games has dwindled quite a bit. I'm starting to see Vanguard as more of a casual game then before- I still love its fast-pace and awesome art but there's not much else keeping me involved in it except the thrill of playing friends. Nevertheless, certain cards are too cool to ignore:

This thing is just way too bad-ass to pass up.

And on to the decklist...

Grade 3's (8)

3x Demon Conquering Dragon, Dungaree "Unlimited"

2x Sealed Demon Dragon, Dungaree

3x Eradicator, Electric Shaper Dragon

Dungaree "Unlimited" is definitely the ace of the deck- nevertheless, I think 3 is a good number. You are expected to see at least 1 in the game, and this ratio allows for it to be more likely that he is your second ride than your first. This is important to utilizing him effectively. These are potential outcomes that are preferred, in order of utility:

1. Ride Electric Shaper -> Break Ride Sealed Demon Dragon, Dungaree (activate effect to retire two) -> Cross-ride Dungaree "Unlimited" and have 3 cards in bind-zone before using his counterblast (leading to him swinging for 21000 on his own)

The ideal case requires Electric Shaper be in your hand as soon as possible, hence the three-of. The 11000 on rear-guard and early game vanguard viability lead me to prefer more of him than Sealed Demon Dragon, though many ratios can work.

The grade 3 line-up specializes in moderate and cheap field-suppression as well as impressive center-line power.

Swinging with Garuda first is always good, as allowing another counterblast by "Unlimited" can very well win you the game. Exorcist Knight can hit 11ks on his own and may be coupled with a booster like Dragon Dancer, Stormy to hit 21k. Shiden lets you freeze an intercept which can actually be really important if your opponent is smart enough to intercept with something in front of a backrow to avoid Shaper's effect. Alone 9ks can still poke at your opponent's 9ks so it does make sense to favor these instead of 10ks (though Thunderstorm Dragoon is reallyyyyyyy cool imo).

One of the distinguishing features of Narukami- hitting magic numbers is just that easy.

Perfect guard is staple. Raien is a viable booster who again keeps your opponent in check so you can blow up their front line. The 10k vanguard boosters may be a little unnecessary but will help in the long run if your opponent manages to stave off your initial big plays. Red River Dragoon is a nice early-game ride and rush engine to give you an edge. Dragon Dancer, Stormy may be used if you're more interested in big plays, leading to attacks powerful enough to force two cards from your opponent behind an Exorcist Knight. The Exorcist Knight booster is a neat little tech for hitting 21k on rear-guard in the clutch, but may slow the deck down.

Dan Dan is obviously the starter here. Trigger line up focuses on crits, meaning we can move Dan Dan behind a rear-guard and put a good vanguard booster down later to avoid minuses. I personally really like the 12 crits here because it means that if your opponent has to let Dungaree "Unlimited" hit, you have a better chance of winning than if you ran draws. Draws are a very luck-based sort of thing in my opinion because they're strictly worse than crits and heals if you don't trigger them.

Friday, August 16, 2013

Recently, I've reconsidered returning to my Vanguard roots- the Gold Paladin clan. Having played initially with the Gold Paladin trial deck, I was turned off from dedicating to the clan mainly by the prospect of having to buy 4 Halo Shield Marks, something I was not ready to do at the time. However, at this point I consider myself fairly dedicated to the game, and would like to at least consider maining Gold Paladins before Liberators arrive (and let's face it besides the Gancelot I'm not too interested in playing those) to see just how far they can take me.

The two builds I'm interested in are: Garmore/Pellinore and Chromejailer. Garmore is probably one of my favorite cards in the game, so it'd take some convincing for me to choose Jailer over it. Introducing the Spectral Duke Ride Chain.

There's no ruling saying Duke must be run in a Chromejailer deck, I might even consider Garmore as a backup, so let's see just how good Duke & Co. is at it's best...

Starting with Black Dragon Whelp, Vortimer.

When you ride Scout of Darkness, Vortimer over Black Dragon Whelp, Black Dragon Whelp stays in the soul, fortifying Scout of Darkness with POWER +1000 and potentially adding a copy of Black Dragon Knight or Spectral Duke Dragon to the hand. Any ride chain is good for adding a more consistent ride to the deck, but the cost is that the starter may not move to (RC), resulting in a -1 vs other decks or a +0 at best. Luckily, Black Dragon Whelp has good utility whether he is ridden over by Scout of Darkness or not (and I don't mean his 4000 power boost, though hey, it's somethin). We'll get to that later.

Next up is Scout of Darkness, Vortimer.

*Gasp, running this ride chain means more non-holos for your deck. Anyways, Scout of Darkness has a nice 7000 power which is great for a grade 1, so isn't too much of a liability on its own. It's also a potential 8000 power ride, meaning if you successful chain-ride and go first you won't be getting rushed too easily. His other skill is where the ride chain really gets to work. When Black Dragon Knight rides over Scout of Darkness, you may retire 1 Gold Paladin to call up to two more from the top of your deck. Note that this Gold Paladin "sacrifice" must be present on the field before you ride, meaning it must be a grade 0 or grade 1. If you field a grade 0, you essentially can't get anything worse when you flip the top two. If it's a grade 1, you may be out a precious booster (trust me they aren't always easy to come by). So, vs other decks this mechanic results in a +1, seeing as you have to -1 in order to +2 afterwards. However, rather than basic card numbers, this can result in more advantage as a result of attacking with an amount of cards you may not have fielded otherwise.

So we might give it another +.5 for that (so scientific).

Second to last we have Black Dragon Knight, Vortimer.

I actually own a copy of this card, mainly cuz it's so badass (and I had good luck with my single Cavalry of Black Steel pack). Of course, he's a potential 10000 ride which is excellent and the 9000 power is nothing to sneeze at. Coupled with Scout of Darkness he hits 16000 on RG which is very good in most cases. So, he basically does Vortimer's skill again when Spectral Duke Dragon rides over it, resulting in another +1 as far as basic card numbers go. Also, at this point, more cards are on the field as retiring choices so your field will likely appear better than before. Also, if you fail to ride Scout of Darkness you can retire Black Dragon Whelp (and I'm sure you'll get something better)

So, as far as fielded cards, you should have 2 cards on the field for free after you ride Spectral Duke Dragon.

Vs. other decks, the chain works as follows at best.

Ride Scout, -1.

Get grade 2 or 3 with Whelp's skill, +0.

Retire RG for Scout's skill, -1.

Get RGs from Scout's skill, +1.

Retire RG for Black Dragon Knight's skill, +0.

Get RGs from Black Dragon Knight's skill, +2.

We could say the deck earns another +1 with the ability to be more aggro then an ordinary deck would be under such conditions. And we might also say the minus for riding scout is insignificant so long as Scout is boosted when it attacks (if it attacks) by the same card to be used as a retire target next turn. Also, many starters will be lost at some point anyway.

So by executing the ride chain, you plus somewhere from 2-4 over your opponent. Just about the right amount to execute your finale without a cost over other decks...

Speaking of which, there he is- Spectral Duke Dragon. So what does our investment in the ride chain buy us? One use of this rather scary skill- the ability to restand at the cost of three rearguards. If you end up having one really bad column with the ride chain, you might as well use his effect immediately to facilitate a nice field change-up. His skill is essentially a -2, seeing as you get one more drive check. Then you get more advantage from the threat of the attack itself, say +1-2.

In the end, you can basically have a net plus of 1-3 over your opponent even after using the skill as a result of the attacks the ride chain enables. If you consider only the amount of cards gained and lost strictly from skills and the extra drive check, the ride chain is a +0.

It actually appears far preferable to riding Chromejailer first and failing to get another plus off of Black Dragon Knight. After Spectral Duke Dragon's skill is used, one could wait till they have two Chromejailers (assuming they have another grade 2 or 3 to field in place of the attacker Spectral kills off) before riding Chromejailer for more cheap field creation. Otherwise I'd probably just play the Chromejailer in the RG and wait to use Spectral Duke Dragon again if need be.

Spectral Duke could really reach the next level when Gancelot takes the stage (20000 base with the potential to restand lolz), but as for now, I'm still leaning towards Garmore. However, I do think it'd be interesting to try Chrome and Spectral to really test how well I can recognize when I should use their costly abilities. Maybe I'll post some potential decklists soon. Anyways, hope you enjoyed the analysis.